casey.o said:
I have a laptop that came with XP installed, but someone gave me a
desktop computer, which works, but has no hard drive. It has a newer
ASUS M2A-VM board, with a AMD Anthlon 64 processor 3200+. The case
has a label for XP Home Edition, with reg number. But I have a
feeling this was on the case, and has no relation to the current MB.
I am aware this processor is a dual core, so I need XP Pro to use
this double processor, because XP Home Ed. cant handle the dual core.
Otherwise, Home Ed. would be fine for my needs.
Anyhow, I have a generic XP pro CD. But no registration # for THIS
computer, since the one on the case is for Home Ed. However, I have
several dead computers that have labels with reg. #s on the case for XP
pro. Can I use them?
I'm not trying to get off free, but XP is np longer sold, so I dont
think I have much choice, unless I can find a complete used copy on ebay
or something, with the reg #.
Is what I'm doing possible? Othereise I could probably get a copy of
Home ED and usethe number on the case.
One other thing, I understand that MS is going to abandon XP real soon.
When that happens, how will someone validate new installs of XP? Or
will XP beconme unusable entirely, if it needs to be reinstalled?
Lastly, when I install from a CD, do I just boot from the CD, or do I
need a DOS boot floppy? (There is no floppy drive, but I can snag one
from one of my dead computers).
Do some research on the mobo to find out what SATA controller it uses.
Then go to the manufacturer's web site for that controller and get their
generic driver. If the mobo maker doesn't provide the SATA driver then
you have to go to the controller chip maker's web site to get a driver.
Since this is an XP install, you'll need a working floppy drive (XP's
install won't look anywhere else, as I recall). Put the driver onto a
floppy (unzip it if in a compressed file). When you start the
installation of XP, there will be a 1-line prompt at the bottom of the
screen saying to hit the F6 key if you need to install additional
drivers. XP doesn't come with all drivers and obviously none that came
out after XP was released. The install won't ask for the floppy right
away. First it will load a ton of drivers it includes merely to see
which ones will find recognizable hardware to load those drivers. Later
you will be prompted for the SATA driver. If you don't install the SATA
driver at this time, XP won't be able to find the mass storage device
(hard disk) to use to put its files.
As others have noted, and depending on which service pack level for the
XP install you have on CD, the included SATA drivers may work; however,
you should have the driver on a floppy already ready if XP doesn't have
a driver for the SATA controller on your mobo. Of course, you'll need
to have all the other drivers for your hardware ready, too, like for the
chipset and video drivers.
Have you yet visited
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/M2AVM/ to get all
the drivers there for Windows XP? I didn't see one for a SATA driver.
Often they roll them into a RAID driver package. Although it says RAID,
you don't need to setup a RAID configuration but just get the SATA
driver from there. I glanced at the "ATI SB600 RAID/AHCI Controller
Driver" download and it has a bunch of .exe files which obviously cannot
be ran until there is an OS under which to load them. The path
\RAID\Driver\x86_x64\x86_XP in the .zip file looks to be where maybe you
could point XP's installer to find drivers (32-bit). There is also a
"Make ATI SB600 RAID Driver Disk" download that looks like you run an
..exe (on a working host) that will lay an image on a floppy for you.
They don't include a readme.txt file to tell you how to use it.
If you don't want to go to all the trouble of having a separate floppy
and CD with drivers, you can slipstream the drivers into the XP image
using nLite (
http://www.nliteos.com/).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slipstream_(computing)
Basically you unroll the installer image off the install CD to put into
a folder on the hard disk, inject the drivers into that image, and burn
a new install CD with the drivers already included. You'll need a
working computer and a optical burner drive along with the XP install
CD, a CD-R disc, the driver packages (unzipped), and the nLite program.
Their site has a guide to help you figure out what to do and online
searches will find some more tutorials. Then if you ever have to
install XP again, use the slipstreamed version on the CD-R you burned.
Note that it sounds like all your XP licenses are OEM licenses. That
means you cannot use those licenses on any other computer. For example,
you said you have a laptop with XP. That is highly likely an OEM
license and always sticks to the laptop. You can't move it anywhere
else. Only if you have a retail (non-OEM) license can you move it to
another computer. You can upgrade or replace (repair) the hardware in
the computer to which an OEM license is attached but you cannot move an
OEM license off a computer once it is installed there. So do you have
any retail licenses of Windows XP that you're not using?
By the way, Windows XP Home Edition will not support multiple
PROCESSORS. It will support a single processor with 1, 2, 3, or 4
CORES. Processors are the physical chip or package you see. Inside a
processor can be 1, or more, "cores". You have 1 processor with 2
cores. The Home Edition will support 1 processor (any number of cores
up to 4). The EULAs regulate the number of processors that license will
support. There is no licensing fees for multiple cores within a
processor. So you can use Windows XP Home Edition on this 1-processor
2-core setup.
Since the crippled computer you got (lacking a hard drive) came with
Windows XP Home Edition and there is a COA sticker on the case for that
version of Windows (which is very likely an OEM version), you can
install XP Home on that computer using that sticker's product key;
however, you'll need the install CD for that version of Windows (it can
be either a retail or OEM image since the product key differentiates the
installation, not what is on the install CD).
If you don't have an install CD (media) for Windows XP Home, you can
sometimes find an eBay seller that is selling only the media (although
more often you find them selling only the license and no media). Of
course, you could just find a cheap sale of both media & license and
ignore or discard the COA sticker now on the case (for example,
http://tinyurl.com/lobl7bd - Windows XP Home, new, returns accepted, US
sellers but you can change the search criteria to what you like).
To amass all existing updates for Windows XP, look at using WSUSoffline.
It will connect to Microsoft's update site (as a WSUS server) and
download all updates accounting for superceded updates and dependencies.
Since the downloads are local, it doesn't matter if and when Microsoft
removes all Windows XP update downloads from their web site since you'll
have them locally.
http://download.wsusoffline.net/
The author of Imgburn has a sense of humor.)